A knitter in the prime of life who knits to network TV

January 30, 2013

Shut Out—and In

It is a good thing that I didn’t proclaim as a New Year’s
resolution that I’d be writing two or three posts a week because I was shut out
of posting again by work on the house. I
had purchased indoor shutters for my bedrooms, which were delayed because
Hurricane Sandy damaged the factory that makes them. So last week some workdays were lost during
the shutter installation and the electrical work on the ceiling lights for
those rooms. I made up the work hours on
other days and weekends, and blogging and other housekeeping chores were the
casualties. (Vacuuming is still on my to-do list, so you can see how I rate
that in terms of importance.)

But I’m absolutely thrilled at the results, particularly in
my knitting/sewing room.

It is now
looking less like a bedroom and more like the “woman cave” I intend it to
be. There will be more work on that room
eventually, but my decorating dollars are being allocated to the living room
and kitchen for the foreseeable future. With
the purchase of those cheap shelves from Target to hold my knitting book
collection and some notions, it is now time to get it organized.

That formidable task will take a long time, and I’m not
putting a due date on its eventual completion.
For now, I’ll be starting with my knitting needles—mostly because I can
never seem to find the ones I need. The
set of drawers on top of the shelves, purchased from the Container Store, holds
my straights, circulars, and dpns, but not my interchangeable sets or the sets
of Knit Picks dpns, which come in their own plastic sleeve. I do like having the interchangeables in one
place, so one of the shelves in the Target book case will have to house the
miscellaneous needles that aren’t in the drawers. The needles in the drawers may be misfiled. I’m
sure that a burglar has not entered our house and made off with the “missing”
ones (leaving my TV and computers untouched), so I’ll be on the hunt to see
where I squirreled them away.

I also discovered another box of knitting books. Those books aren’t shelved. Although that bookshelf might seem
deceptively neat, it is really a jumble.

Despite the disruption in getting work done last week, I did
knit. DS informed me on the first day of
last week’s cold snap that his gloves never showed up when he unpacked his
clothing (which was removed from his closet and stored in the garage and
basement prior to having the floors finished and room painted). I volunteered to knit him a pair of the
warmest mittens I could imagine, and I used bits of leftover Morehouse Merino
(two-ply, in natural, undyed shades). The pattern is from Folk Mittens. These are the Salish (Cowichan) mittens, and
the pattern was very easy to follow. I
wanted something that required no modifications because I needed them in a
hurry—and all worked as planned.

I decided to use the weaving-in method for the colorwork to prevent floats from catching on Will's fingers. It was a nice practice piece for the method I'll be using later in the year on my Philosopher's Wool sweater.

The mittens were also knit as a public service because
whenever I finish a heavy wool garment, it becomes unseasonably warm. So today we’re basking in about 50°
weather. Although it is gray and damp, it isn’t in the teens.

One reason I’m back on track with my work hours
is that I appear to have some sort of respiratory virus that is keeping me from
swimming and the gym in general. I doubt
if this is the flu because I don’t feel that sick (just unpleasantly stuffy),
and it is definitely not the Noro virus because I’m eating much more than I
should for just sitting around without exercise. So while I am stuck at home and waiting around for it
to go away, I might just take a lunch break and sort those needles.

Comments

It's my dpn heap that I'm forever struggling with. They are all in one glass and every time I want a set I have to work through them with a needle gauge. I really need to sort them out but I can always find an excuse to do something else.

I'm a floater rather than a weaver but I have a sweater where even the three stitch floats on the lice were caught. It looks very like your last photo.